Should Time Allow
by alorindanya
Summary: Sarah must open her eyes to the fact that she isn't crazy; the Labyrinth does exist.


A/N: Merry Christmas!!   
  
The title of this story really has nothing to do with the story itself. I had written in my notebook "A short story idea, should time allow," so that I wouldn't forget to write it out. After going back to the notes, some how that seemed like a perfect 'title' to use, despite that it might not actually fit the story. This is not at J/S story, but I hope you read it anyway. A HUGE thanks goes out to my sister (Draygona) for pointing out where this story should begin in the plot.  
  
Should Time Allow:  
  
Part 1  
  
Bella Anderson sat in anticipation as she waited for her next client to arrive. She tried to act as though her patient was just like any other, tried to act as though her shaky hands as they brushed back her rusty bangs from her eyes was due to the air being too chilly, tried to stop her blue eyes from darting to her watch every twenty seconds. But knowing the woman sitting beside her, these actions wouldn't go unnoticed. She had invited a colleague to sit in on today's session. It was a miracle that she had convinced her friend to come at all, being that her friend didn't have much time to step away from her own practice and since Bella didn't exactly practice in the mainstream areas of Psychology. Her practice was indeed unconventional and new age, as she took patients who believed they had seen UFO's, been abducted by aliens, had dined with Big Foot, or had lived a past life. Her colleague, on the other hand, only dealt with serious studies of the human mind.  
  
But Bella desperately wanted a second opinion on a client, especially from this colleague. The patient, Matthew Hannigin was different. He was only 19 and already paranoid schizophrenic and highly neurotic; there was no doubt about that. But what he recalled from his childhood didn't fit in with the rest of his diagnosis. Whether they were repressed memories, a past life experience, or he was just plain crazy, Bella couldn't figure out. But she was sure her colleague would know.  
  
"Dr. Anderson, Matthew Hannigan is here. Shall I let him in?" a voice came over her intercom.  
  
Bella leaned over and pressed the intercom button, "Yes, we're ready for him."  
  
She watched as her colleague, Sarah Decoursey, began to scribble notes in her own notebook. It made Bella begin to feel like she was the one being analyzed. For all she knew, that could be exactly what was happening as her friend liked to study general human behavior in as a hobby. Fortunately, Dr. Anderson had Matthew's entrance into the room to distract her mind from such a tormenting thought.   
  
Matthew froze once he noticed that another woman was in the room and he turned accusing eyes towards Bella as he wisped out, "Who's she?"  
  
Bella stood, opening arms in a calming gesture, "She is a friend. I went to college with her and she is observing my patients today."  
  
"If at any time my presence bothers you, simply ask me to leave." Dr. Decoursey said, attempting to sound soothing.  
  
Bella cringed, wishing that hadn't been said. The whole reason she had asked Sarah to come was so that she could observe THIS patient. If he took her invitation to have her leave, it would have all been for nothing.  
  
"No, you can stay, I guess." Matthew walked slowly to the 'thinking couch', shuffling his feet as he went, looking around at everything with untrusting eyes. He looked under the couch and raised up on his toes to make sure nothing was hiding behind it before looking to Bella again, "Lysol."  
  
Bella forced herself not to roll her eyes at her negligence at having forgotten the one thing that Matthew always needed her to have on hand. He was deadly adamant on having everything around him Spick & Span clean, as he was absolutely intolerant of germs of any kind. It had only been two sessions ago that she had discovered that what ever had happened to him in his childhood, from this one pending experience, had created this hatred for anything unclean. Bella pulled open a drawer that held the Lysol can and a roll of paper towels at the ready and moved over to the couch. She was glad that it was covered in shiny leather, as the Lysol wiped right off. Once finished, Bella moved to return to her desk and heard a soft whisper of a noise as Matthew spurted a small amount of air freshener into the air that smelled faintly of pears. She looked over her shoulder to see that he was putting the small can of scent into his jacket pocket just as he sat down, satisfied that all was sanitary.  
  
Bella returned to her desk and their session began by her pressing the record button on her tape player.  
  
"I will be tape recording, as we normally do each for session. At our last meeting, more of this place you visited as a child was revealed under hypnosis. I believe that whatever happened there is the reason behind much of what makes you uneasy about certain things, and the only way to move beyond this fear, the only way to heal is to find the core cause and stare it in the face. Do you want to go further into these memories?"  
  
His eyes darted between the two women, still uneasy at the presence of an extra body, "I won't be hypnotized again, will I?"  
  
Bella sighed, "I'm afraid there is no other way to reach that which you cannot remember on your own."  
  
Bella's mind filled with dread as Matt's eyes continued to dart from her to Dr. Decoursey. His knee started to bob in nervousness; she was loosing him. She cursed herself for putting her own curiosities before the welfare of a patient. This was too soon to be asking for him to feel comfortable enough to relive in his mind this traumatic experience in front of someone he did not know. Heck, it had taken Bella seven months just to get this far with him herself. What had she been thinking?  
  
"Okay. I have to lay down, right?" Matt asked as he swung his legs up onto the length of the couch and lounged back to rest his head against the arm.  
  
Bella let out a relieved breath and eased her voice to a soft tone, "Yes. Lay and relax. Clear your mind of all worries. You are in a safe place and no one can harm you." Bella flipped a switch that dimmed the lights in the room. "Are you comfortable?"  
  
"Yes." Matthew answered in a voice much more sure than that of his wakened mind, showing that he was letting go of his uncertainties and trusting his enviornment.  
  
"Go back to that place, the stone room you've told me of before. What do you see? What do you feel?"  
  
"The floor is cold, rough. The air is rank."  
  
Bella jotted down his description in her notebook, "What does it smell like?"  
  
"Like my drunk uncle's house, only a thousand times worse. There's booze leaking from a barrel, feces on the ground from the dozens of chickens running about. But the breath from the...whatever they are make me want to puke."  
  
"Describe these creatures."  
  
"Ugly as sin. They don't all look alike. Some are big, some as small as a cat. Their eyes are beady, but if you look at them really good, they're almost human. Their skin feels human too, but so warty and gray."  
  
"Had you seen one of these before going to this place?"  
  
"No. Thank God."  
  
Bella took a moment to glance at her colleague, who sat stiffly in her chair. This was exactly what she expected, "Matthew, do you mind if Dr. Decoursey asks you a few questions?"  
  
Her friend's green eyes went wide with surprise and Sarah silently begged to remain quiet, but Bella would have none of it, so taking a calming breath, Dr. Decoursey asked, "Was everything about this place terrifying to you?"  
  
Matthew didn't answer right away, the muscles in his jaw clinching as his mind dug for something positive about his experience. His eyebrows lifted when he thought of something, "There was a man."  
  
Bella noticed Sarah's face go completely blank, showing no emotion, no clue to what might be playing on her mind. And it appeared that Sarah wasn't going to continue with the questions, so Bella went on, "And had you seen this man before?"   
  
"No."  
  
"But he did not scare you."  
  
"He was nice. He played with me and sang a funny song about magic dancing." Although Matt's face had relaxed when talking about this man, his brows quickly furled as he remembered something else, "He had those things watch me when he wasn't around."  
  
Bella jotted down this tit bit in her notes while her mind tried to think of how his brain could associate this being who made him feel comfortable to the creatures that repulsed him. She demised more digging would have to be done before a connection could be made, "Matt, do you know how you came to be in that stone room with those creatures and the man?"  
  
"We didn't drive..."  
  
Bella's eyes raised in surprise, "We? Who is 'we'?"  
  
"Me and Curtis."  
  
"I'm unfamiliar with Curtis. Who is he?"  
  
"My brother."  
  
That was odd. As far as Bella could remember, from reading his file, Matthew was an only child. Great. These couldn't be repressed memories if he believed he had a nonexistent sibling. A new development to add to the list of his mental imbalances, as well as a huge mistake of bringing her colleague into this session.   
  
"How did you and your brother arrive there?" Maybe it wasn't a mistake after all, Bella thought when she heard Sarah ask this question.  
  
"Curtis told me a story and then I were just 'there' in that room."  
  
"And Curtis wasn't with you?" Bella asked, trying to get more to gain some sense of what he meant.  
  
"No--well--the man showed me a ball, a crystal ball, and I saw Curtis inside. He was walking through this maze. It stretched as far as you could see around the castle."  
  
"Castle?" Bella remembered castles were generally made of stone, and at least one thing made more sense, "That is where the stone room was. In a castle."   
  
"A smelly castle that reeked." Matt hissed.  
  
"Did your brother ever find you?" Sarah asked.  
  
"He...he..." Matthew's face started to convulse suddenly as he remembered, a tear streaking down his face.  
  
Bella had never seen anyone under hypnosis not break out of it when under distress, and Matthew did the same and came out of it. He sat up and took in panicked breaths as he looked around the room to remember where he was.   
  
Bella quickly turned on the lights. "Sshh, you're safe."  
  
Matthew's eyes latched onto her and recognition ignited in them after a few seconds, "Dr. Anderson? How long was I under?"  
  
"Not longer than fifteen minutes. Do you remember what you told us?" Bella asked, always curious to what the mind remembers after having not remembered for so long.  
  
Matthew closed his eyes, trying to think, "Yeah. There was a man in that room with me, and that room was in a castle surrounded by a maze."  
  
He seemed rather proud of himself for remembering, as he smiled at Bella. She smiled back to her patient. "That is very good progress in retention."   
  
"And what of your brother?"  
  
Both of them turned towards Sarah, Matthew with curious eyes, and Bella with deadly ones. To upset the fabric of a patient's mental processes was completely against what their practice was designed for. Dr. Decoursy, having had a practice of her own for six years, should know better than to force a patient to remember something they weren't ready for.  
  
"Brother?"  
  
"You don't have to answer that Matthew." Bella stated pointedly.  
  
"Curtis....Curtis was there. I had forgotten." There was definite sadness in Matthew's voice.  
  
"What happened to your brother? You have to know." Sarah's adamancy surprised Bella.   
  
Matthew shook his head in disbelief as his eyes stared into space, remembering, "He argued with the man...the man was going to take me away from him. Then they stopped yelling and Curtis was..."  
  
"He was what?" Sarah pushed.  
  
"I think that's enough for today." Bella said, as it was her duty to protect, not interrogate her patient.  
  
"He was turned into one of those creatures." Matthew blurted out, his tears slipping past his eyelashes.  
  
Bella immediately rose from her desk and handed him a box of tissues. "Matthew, I'm sorry. This was not the right time to have you progress so far into your experience. I'm sorry."  
  
Matthew sniffled, "Can I leave now?"  
  
"Of course." Bella gestured with open hands that he could make his own way to the door.  
  
Once the door shut behind him, Bella turned to her colleague and hissed, "Do not presume that you can go outside of our rules of conduct just to satisfy your curiosity. You do not know my patient. It has taken weeks just to progress this far with him, to gain his trust and what you just did could have destroyed that!"  
  
Sarah remained quiet, but lowered her eyes as she nodded her head in understanding.  
  
Finished with her abrupt lecture, Bella returned to her desk and pretended to finish making last minute notes. But what was really on her mind was her colleague's thoughts about what this patient had revealed, and more importantly, why Sarah had been so fervent in having her questions answered. Bella tried to focus on finishing her notes, but instead, her mind made her think how to tactfully obtain her colleague's thoughts, as she had just blown up at her. Well, she determined that the best way to do it was to simply pretend it didn't happen.  
  
"So, in your professional opinion, what do you believe is Mr. Hannigan's prognosis?"  
  
Sarah took a deep breath, then slowly answered, "Obviously his tendencies to demand sanitation and clean air stem from the putrid environment of the place he believes he has visited. And his fear of things hiding under furniture come from these creatures his mind has created."  
  
Bella straightened her back and leaned her elbows on to her desk, "Ah, so you believe this to be a figment of his imagination."  
  
Her friend smiled slightly, her brows rising to indicate that in no way did she believe him to be insane, "I believe that he believes he has visited another place."  
  
A knowing smile spread across Bella's face, "Yet you have yet to deny that it IS an actual place. What am I, as your fellow colleague, to take of that?"  
  
"You may take it as you wish. Maybe I don't like diagnosing someone who is not my actual patient, as you clearly didn't want me asking him anything."  
  
"No. Maybe you were so quick to ask those questions because maybe YOU don't want to believe that you've finally met someone who's been to the place you're so desperate to deny exists."   
  
Bella quickly looked away and silently finished her notes, trying to ignore the burning eyes of her friend. Being a psychiatrist was a hard job; so many lives to pick apart, rearrange and straighten. It was hard enough doing this for patients, let alone to point out imbalances in ones own friends.   
  
Bella smiled in a sad way, though she didn't look at her friend when she sighed, "You know what he saw. You've seen it."  
  
Sarah's eyes went wide and accusing. "How did you know?"  
  
"You....you told me once. Maybe you don't remember. I mean, we were both drunk out of our wits at that graduation party. You studied Mythology as a way to get away from the crazy medical stuff, so at the time I just thought you were telling some story you had found. It wasn't until last week with Matt that I even recalled the story you told. Some things just clicked."  
  
Sarah sat up quickly and went to grab her coat that hung on a hook near the door, "It's just a coincidence. It never happened. It was just an elaborate dream that..."  
  
"Two people that have never met before cannot possibly share a similar dream."  
  
"They aren't similar at all. I didn't..."  
  
"He was the wished away, you were the wisher." At Sarah's shocked expression, Bella added, "Yeah, you told me about what you did to your brother too. Same story just different sides of the coin. But you tell me this; why does he remember a brother? He's been an only child his entire life."  
  
"Bella, I can't tell you anything because I don't know."  
  
"You got your brother back. What if Matthew's brother lost and..."  
  
"It was a dream, all right." Sarah rashly stood and gathered her things, "A dream I don't particularly care to remember."  
  
"Denial isn't just a river in Egypt. You said a lot of things that night seven years ago, including that you started studying Psychology to prove to yourself that you were crazy."  
  
Sarah stopped at the door, "Then you are just as crazy as I am to even believe any of this. Help the kid. Help him forget that goblins exist. They ruined his life. I thankfully haven't let them ruin mine."  
  
A/N II: Those of you reading "The Thief, the King, and the Son," don't loose hope. It will be finished...over an unknown period of time, but it will happen. This is just something different to give my mind a little vacation from TKS, as I have been writing TKS since June of 2002. 


End file.
